A Cinephile’s Critiques

Directed by J.J. Abrams, 2006 (Color, 7:3, Surround, 125′)
Starring Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, and Michelle Monaghan

Mission: Impossible III could have been subtitled Attack of the MacGuffins, if this movie series used subtitles. It doesn’t, though, and perhaps that’s just as well because, despite all the embellishments, the third movie in this series is really just the first two movies pared down to their essentials.

This time around, Ethan Hunt is married, and while you might think this would change things for someone who has spent his time globe-hopping under aliases and blowing up things while people shoot lots and lots of bullets at him, it really doesn’t. There’s a cute sequence with his wife early in the film, where we learn about a unique, and, as it will turn out, useful skill he’s picked up since the last installment, and there are a few lines of dialog about how Impossible Mission Force agents really shouldn’t get married, but, well, it’s all just a MacGuffin. The marriage only raises the stakes for Hunt, and gives him a weak spot for the villain to exploit.

This film, like its predecessors, has the trappings of a caper film, but, really, they’re just MacGuffins too. The various breaking-and-entering, impersonation, and theft schemes aren’t really planned and played-out elaborately enough to make them central to the movie. They’re there to add a dash of suspense to the fascinating travelogue of exotic locations our heroes travel to.

And why, exactly, do they travel in cargo jets, to places like the Vatican, or elaborate subterranean office complexes, or abandoned warehouses filled with high-tech weapons, or the back streets and skyscrapers of Shanghai? Well, they’re trying to track down the Rabbit’s Foot. This is, we learn, a gadget with a biohazard symbol painted on its side. And that’s about all we learn about it. So, yes, it’s a MacGuffin too.

Well, if Mission: Impossible III isn’t really about people with improbably hazardous jobs getting married, and it’s not really about the habits and character of far-flung locales, and it’s not really about a biological weapon, then what is it about?

If you’ve seen the first two movies, you know the answer to that one. It’s about a cold-blooded villain, a tenacious high-tech hero, and lots of very impressive stunts. And this time around, it works, and it works well. The stunts are stunning, and while they might not be particularly believable, they’re not as ludicrous as they were the last time around.

These stunts are meticulously weaved into the framework of the various MacGuffins and everything is beautifully filmed in a vivid chiaroscuro of architecture, faces, and color. Want to know what’s going on? Just look at the lights. Lively greens and golds mean Hunt is in the field and another stunt is coming up soon, and soothing blue tells you he’s back at his home base cooking up the next stage of the plot.

In movies with lots of misdirection, like this one, and lots of things flying through the air in unlikely ways, like this one, it’s important to have a nice simple theme – whether it’s good guy vs. bad guy or green setting vs. blue setting – to hold everything together, and this one does.

Directed by Brian de Palma, 1996 (Color, 7:3, Surround, 110′)
Starring Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Henry Czerny, Emmanuelle Béart, and Ving Rhames

The Cold War is over but the Impossible Mission Force is still doing what it does best: planning elaborate capers and pulling off hair-raising heists in the name of patriotism. Things have changed, of course, and Mission: Impossible uses this notion to play off our expectations from the TV series of the same name.

Things start off normally enough. Well, normal for the IMF, at least. Our specialized spies are fooling everyone with their schemes, but not, as you would expect, without things going awry and creating suspense. However, when things go wrong this time around, they go really, horribly, wrong. And, this time, the problem might not be with the — not as foolproof as it seemed — plan. The problem might not even be enemy action. The real problem just might be that our heroes are every last bit as deceptive as they’ve been portrayed.

Things are rarely as they seem in Brian de Palma’s films, but things do usually seem very pretty. The European settings appear elegant, baroque, and sinister all at once. Saturated colors pop out of shadowy environments. Cameras move through walls, on occasion, disorient us with odd angles, when necessary, and transform the exotic into the surreal, just before next plot twist.

But, just like the IMF’s plans, or personnel, this move isn’t as flawless as it might like to be. The villain’s motives seem a little trite, even for someone who’s been backstabbing people for decades. Mission: Impossible’s computer usage, which is central to its plot, is questionable enough to distract computer-literate viewers. And the final stunt goes far enough overboard that the filmmakers, wisely, realize that they’ll need to throw the audience a wink after things finally stop flying around.

All in all, however, the film does what it sets out to do pretty well. It creates suspense, startles us with pyrotechnics, and turns the TV show’s convoluted tropes inside out.